Logs for ShadowRN and Associated Mailing Lists

From:	Paul J. Adam Shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk
Subject:	Acquisition
Date:	Fri, 7 Apr 2000 13:55:15 +0100

Message no. 1 *****PRIVATE: Dona Minnie Descabiere
>>>>>[Dona,

As you may already have heard, we have your box.

Any special delivery instructions?]<<<<<
-- Jules <13:54:53/04-07-61>

From:	James Dening james@************.force9.co.uk
Subject:	Acquisition
Date:	Fri, 7 Apr 2000 14:09:25 +0100

Message no. 2 *****PRIVATE: Jules
>>>>>[Excellent.

Bring it to the house, immediately. Would you like your account
credited now, or would you like a credstick when you drop the
box off?

I appreciate your expediency on this. There is a <moderate sum> bonus
for you - but, I have a favour to ask. This is the first battle in what looks like
being a war. I may need you at short notice - would you consider a
short-term contract to work exclusvely for me, say, for a month. Bring
your furry friend too.

The pay will be good. Very good, even by my standards...

Jules, this is a personal favour I'm asking of you. Please consider it
well.]<<<<<
-- Dona Minnie Descabiere <13:55:12/04-08-61>

*****PRIVATE: Bob Laconi
>>>>>[Bob, we've got the teeth! Get that mage, Mike, or whatever
his name is over here right away - we *need* to get a move on.]<<<<<
-- Dona Minnie Descabiere <13:56:56/04-08-61>

From:	Paul J. Adam Shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk
Subject:	Acquisition
Date:	Fri, 7 Apr 2000 14:30:47 +0100

Message no. 3 *****PRIVATE: Dona Minnie Descabiere
>>>>>[We're on our way.

For the money, account transfer's easiest. I'll pay off the troops from
that.

For the employment - yes, we accept. In for a penny, in for a
pound...]<<<<<
-- Jules <14:30:42/04-07-61>
>

From:	James Dening james@************.force9.co.uk
Subject:	Acquisition
Date:	Fri, 7 Apr 2000 14:36:43 +0100

Message no. 4 *****PRIVATE: Jules
>>>>>[Good - as soon as possible please.

I'll give you more details when you turn up.]<<<<<
-- Dona Minnie Descabiere <14:36:12/04-07-61>

From:	"Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject:	Acquisition
Date:	Fri, 17 Jan 1997 21:21:24 +0000

Message no. 5 *****PRIVATE: Mike Tull, Interarms Ltd
>>>>>[Hiya, Mike. Easy one this time. I need two M9s or 92FSs. Four
extended mags and four standards. Preferably both the same finish and in
fairly similar condition.

+++++credit transfer: >>encrypted<<

Standard details for the transaction.]<<<<<
-- Lynch <21:20:35/01-17-58>

*****PRIVATE: Lynch
>>>>>[No problem, I FedExed them already. Ex-US Army, hardly fired. The
magazines were harder, but a little leverage paid off.

Little mainstream for you, though. Been watching those turn-of-the-
century flatscreens again?]<<<<<
-- Mike Tull <21:22:35/01-17-58>
Classics and Antiques Manager
Interarms Limited

*****PRIVATE: Mike Tull, Interarms Ltd
>>>>>[Not really. They'll be a gift to a friend.]<<<<<
-- Lynch <21:20:35/01-17-58>

From:	"Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject:	Acquisition
Date:	Tue, 30 Jun 1998 23:50:27 +0100

Message no. 6 *****PRIVATE: Farmer
>>>>>[I hope this is satisfactory. Eleven subjects were delivered and
left restrained, as you requested. We did not linger to wait for your
men.

+++++begin video
The cameraman (it might be helmet mounted) is moving cautiously through
a ruined building, approaching a fire, raucous music and the sound of
laughter.

"C'mon, baby!" someone cheers. "Get it _off_! Get it all _off_!"

"Then I get _you_ off, right?" A female voice, coquettish.

Figures are becoming visible around the fire. Gang members, High Lord
Killers from the colours, sitting, sprawling or leaning, most drinking
beer. Dancing near the fire, a skinny Elven girl is down to stockings,
G-string and T-shirt, and is lifting the shirt's hem a few inches at a
time to reveal her improbably augmented breasts.

Cholo pauses, gives a series of hand signals, and there is the faintest
of movements around him: he holds position as the girl finishes her
striptease.

"Carlo. Ready." the commlink says softly.

"Go, go, _go_!" Cholo replies, surging from around the half-collapsed
support pillar to aim the fat barrel of a HK227S at the group. Other
black-clad figures also spring from nowhere: four of the Forsaken
trapping the gangers in a crossfire. There is a moment of shock, before
Cholo fires a short, suppressed burst into the boom-box and silences the
pounding music.

"Hey! Who the hell-!"

"Silence!" Cholo snaps at the ganger. "Move and you die. Make noise and
you die. Disobey any order and you die. Understood?" Sullen silence
greets his words, broken by a cry of alarm: another gang member and an
underdressed girl are thrust into the group, both still trying to
rearrange their clothing.

"You, on your feet." The apparent leader, and the surliest. "Walk to
that wall. Kneel facing it, hands on the wall. Cross your ankles." As
the High Lord Killer warily complies, Alba and Carlo move to him:
quickly putting a hood over his head and then plasticuffing his hands
behind his back. "You, next to him, the same."

"What are you..." The question tails off as Cholo aims the HK, the
lasersight bright on the boy's chest.

"Obey us and we will not harm you. This is a... training exercise, if
you will." he says.

"Corp shit." someone mutters, disgusted.

"You will be rewarded for your time, if you co-operate. And we will
replace your stereo." Alba suggests, as she tightens the Ty-Wrap around
the second captive's wrists. This seems to lighten the mood somewhat,
and the nine gang members and the clothed prostitute are packaged
without incident.

"The van." Cholo says, and the group are chivvied to their feet and
herded into the back of a panel van. Carlo and Luis are left guarding
the naked girl. Luis offers a hopeful grin: Cholo sighs.

"Ten minutes, no more." he says, and both men nod: Luis knocking the
girl to the floor and pinning her shoulders, Carlo unbuckling his web
belt and forcing her thighs apart. The girl screams in fear and pain and
struggles uselessly, provoking only laughter.

Cholo simply turns away from the ugly scene, checking the captives in
the back are secure. They are, though being forced to listen to the
noisy rape has obviously destroyed their confidence that this is just
some corporate-security exercise from which they'll emerge unharmed.

When both men are sated, they throw the sobbing girl - hooded and
cuffed, but otherwise still clad only in her laddered stockings - into
the van with her erstwhile customers, and climb in themselves, snapping
at one prisoner to lie still. Cholo gets in the front, Alba beside him,
and starts the van.

"They disturb you more than you admit, don't they?" the woman asks,
folding the stock on her HK227.

"I will admit I prefer to be seperated further from them when they play
these games with their victims. I certainly prefer not to listen, unless
absolutely necessary." Cholo replies, coaxing the vehicle over the
rubble scattered in the streets. "And it strikes me as unprofessional:
they are extremely vulnerable while they amuse themselves thus. But, it
is a useful bait by which to motivate and reward them. It has served us
well in the past, as a means to exact co-operation. And, given what
awaits the girl, to be raped a few times before she dies will be of
small importance."

"And yet you cannot watch their work." Alba sighs. "You should consider
allowing the team to fragment. What have we left to accomplish? You and
I form a natural team. Carlo and Luis will find employment as enforcers
in almost any criminal outfit. Jorge can join whichever group he wishes,
or become an independent. You work too hard to hold this group together,
for no mission."

"I considered that. I still do. Perhaps, when the Farmer no longer
requires our services - or his employment loses its gloss - then we
should go our separate ways. But together... together we are still all
that remains of C Platoon, Third Company, Fourth Legion of the Aztlan
Leopard Guard. Rejecting that is hard."

"Perhaps it has served its purpose. The platoon is destroyed. The
mission is over, and the man who caused its failure is dead. We can
neither succeed, nor avenge. What does it serve to live in the past? We
should move forward, not look back."

"I will consider what you say. Certainly Luis and Carlo are becoming
harder to keep in check." Cholo pulls into a half-ruined parking
structure, down a ramp that looks deceptively choked with rubble, and is
actually quite easy going. What looked like inky darkness at the end of
the tunnel turns out to be a blackout curtain.

His headlights pick out burned-out vehicles, twisted metal, soot-
blackened concrete, on the first subterranean level: the second, though,
while still scorched and blackened, is very different.

The debris and wreckage has been bulldozed to the back, forming a
tangled mass: in front of it are two twenty-foot shipping containers,
sealed and closed, refrigeration unit on one of them oozing vapour. A
portable generator hums, and the fluorescent lights flicker into life
automatically.

Two simple scaffolding A-frames support a single rail, some seven feet
off the ground, and a dozen karabiners dangle menacingly from it. Luis
and Carlo are already herding the prisoners out of the van, and one at a
time hanging them from the hooks by the cuffs around their wrists. The
karabiners, mercifully, seem to be hung on shock cords, keeping the
prisoners from suffering too much pain from their confinement: though
this is obviously not intended to be a long-term affair.

"Are we pressed for time, _jefe_?" Carlo asks, as he regards the row of
suspended captives: many of them shouting threats, pleading, or just
yelling obscenities through their hoods. The two women, at the end of
the row, obviously have his attention.

"Enough. We leave them for the shaman." the Forsaken's leader says,
slightly sharply.
+++++end video

I include my concerns about the group as a note: you are a trusted
employer and I do not wish our possible seperation to come as a rude
shock should it occur. We will not allow it to interfere with any tasks
we have contracted with you, of course.]<<<<<
-- Cholo <23:49:43/06-30-59>

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